It’s time for fall! With the autumn leaves turning and a cascade of color falling everywhere, it’s time to reflect that season in the classroom. Autumn is a great time to engage kids both indoors and outdoors. If you want to share fall with your children or students in a fun way, here are 4 fun child friendly activities to celebrate fall.
Make Your Own Fall Trees
Let your kids create their own fall trees! This is a fun craft kids can easily do on rainy days when it is less fun to explore outside. Provide a blank tree for each child, and let them paint in leaves in autumn colors, or glue paper scraps of appropriate colors on the tree.
Round sponge paint brushes or cotton swabs make great leaf shapes that are easy for smaller kids to handle.
Outdoor Scavenger Hunt
In good weather, taking kids outside to explore the new season directly can be a great choice. A scavenger hunt helps kids pay attention to nature, focusing on the beauty that is all around them. There are many thoughtful premade lists available, but feel free to make your own tailored to the autumn features around you.
Great examples of things to look for:
- Pinecones
- Maple leaves
- Acorns
- Squirrels
- Spider webs
- Snails
- Birds
If you have autumn decorations such as scarecrows, haybales or corn stalks, these could also be added to the list. If you’re using a generic list, check over the contents to make sure the items on the list are readily available nearby.
Have a Harvest Parade
Dressing up in costumes, parades, and festivals are all a big part of the season. A fun activity for a large group of kids is to wear costumes together and march in a parade! Kids can have a great deal of fun showing off their Halloween costumes with their friends.
Don’t forget to grab a few costumes in different sizes for kids who have forgotten what day the parade is. It can be very disappointing for younger kids to realize they don’t have a costume for a very exciting event like a parade.
Decorate Pumpkins
Pumpkins and other gourds are generally associated with autumn, when they often ripen. Letting kids decorate a pumpkin with paint, glitter, glue and other crafting supplies is not only a fun craft, but can work as an autumn decoration as well.
Another fun game related to pumpkins is to play “Pin the nose on the pumpkin.” Little ones can use paper noses with double sided sticky tape on them, and try to get as close to the nose area of a jack-o-lantern as possible while blindfolded.
Autumn is a wonderful time of year, filled with so many seasonal activities. Keeping children in touch with the seasons can also help them better understand and adjust to the changes associated with each time of year.
Autumn activities are a great way to help children learn about the seasons, cooler weather, and basic science such as trees losing their leaves.
